Twenty Floors
by wixley-kryptonese
Summary: 'you broke into my apartment drunk thinking it was your friends place and I should call the cops by my cat likes you so' – ft. female Tony Stark and the Bot(s) as 'my cat'
' _you broke into my apartment drunk thinking it was your friends place and I should call the cops by my cat likes you so?'_ – ft. female Tony Stark and the Bot(s) as 'my cat'

* * *

Natasha Stark was not unfamiliar with assassins, and kidnapping slash hostage attempts. She was the richest single person on the globe, and one of the smartest too. She'd created weapons of mass destruction for over two decades, and unknowingly provided terrorists with the means to murder innocents. People did want to kill her, people did want her for their own purposes – the Ten Rings had come the closest to succeeding, for the latter. But no assassin had ever come close to getting at her, due to her vast amount of personal security.

Which was why her brain short-circuited when she saw the infamous assassin and known Hydra asset, Winter Soldier, in her secret apartment, letting Dummy poke and investigate his metal arm.

"J? Why…" Natasha trailed off though, catching sight of his face. _That's Bucky Barnes. That's Bucky fucking Barnes_. Or his son, or grandson – but Captain America was still young and fit, it wasn't unthinkable to believe that Bucky Barnes was the Winter Soldier. The assassin had been around for a few decades, after all. Being Bucky Barnes actually made the mythos of the Winter Soldier make sense.

Unfortunately, the absence of JARVIS was a more pressing matter than the Winter Soldier's identity. Sure that he already knew she was there, Natasha kept her eyes on him as she moved to her computers, tapping the keys. Her computer fired up, JARVIS's familiar type started appearing on the screen, explaining how there was a malfunction with his MUTE setting, following his instalment into her newest hiding place in Vienna, which had been overlooked, making him unable to inform her of the security breech. Breathing a sigh of relief, Natasha made a mental note to fix it before turning back to the Winter Soldier.

He wasn't in combat clothes, to her curiosity – though perhaps she should have guessed he wouldn't be. He hadn't killed her, which either spoke of sadism, or that he wasn't there to kill her, and the Winter Soldier wasn't known for sadism. But there was also the fact that Dummy seemed very determined to find out what the arm did, and that made Natasha scared – not for herself, never for herself, but for Dummy. It was pure, dumb luck that she'd had him transferred to Stark Tower, now Avengers Tower, before the Mandarin fiasco that had all his siblings destroyed when her home was blown up.

Only because of Vision's generosity, allowing her to download a copy of his brain, of _JARVIS_ , back into her servers, let Natasha have her AI at all – she wouldn't lose Dummy too.

"Dummy, get back to your charging station," she ordered coldly. The Soldier jumped, turning to her with wide, bloodshot eyes that Natasha knew all too well. "Are you drunk?" She asked sharply, as Dummy beeped in hello, trundling over to his dock.

"I…think so. I was able to find some really strong shit…" the Soldier, Bucky, blinked, looking more human than Natasha expected from a brainwashed Hydra assassin as he glanced around her apartment. "Where am I?"

"My place. And not yours." A breeze caught her attention. Her window was open. "You broke in. You do know I'm over twenty floors up?" She stalked over, looking out and down, noting with annoyance the balconies every second apartment beneath her. Logically, she knew about them already, but still…

"Who are you? You look familiar. And what's with the robot?"

Natasha hazarded a look over at the now-yawning man. "It's best you don't know who I am, in case someone finds you. You're a wanted man, Bucky Barnes. And Dummy's not just a robot – he's an AI, an artificial intelligence. He has his own thoughts and feelings."

He blinked, looking over at him, "Then why do you call him 'dummy'?"

"Because I called myself a dummy, the moment he woke up," she replied, "and he thought it was his designation. I can't change his mind without wiping his memory, and he's not advanced enough for a specialised wipe." She could see how the words affected him. He cringed, looked in pain, even. Raising her chin, Natasha wondered what to do with him. She could phone the police, but…

Dummy liked him.

Dummy liking this man meant a lot of things. He was usually very wary of people – he'd known Happy, Rhodey and Pepper for years, and only Rhodey had gained this kind of trust to be in Dummy's personal space. Happy and Pepper still got shy beeps and stilted motions. There was a reason that Rhodey referred to himself as 'Uncle Rhodey' when she asked him to visit the Bots.

So as Bucky Barnes continued to glance at Dummy, looking like all he wanted to do was figure out what he was, Natasha decided she wouldn't call it in – at least, she wouldn't call it in until Dummy had satisfied his curiosity.


End file.
